dsp solution for reason

[chrischrischris]

Hi,

Is there a dsp solution for reason. I am getting bored of scouring the web looking for a fix to improve dsp performance. Ive spent too much time looking at uad videos of people unboxing sattalites over the past 24 hours and just need a straight answer before I decide to sell my tascam and buy their new studer!!!!
Is there a way to utilize some sort of sharc pcie chip that would benefit my reason music making ventures?

I use a pc , presonus firestudio via firewire, 8gb ram , amd fx 8 core

Also Å•unning at 64 buffer speed at 1ms latency. This is a must for me to keep my system this way.

Sorry for the lack of knowledge in the dsp field!
(Maybe in this new forum / playground we no longer need to apologise for poor understanding)
Long time user first time caller

Chris

[normen]

The Apollo line of UAD interfaces allow you to use their virtual channels as well as an ADAT or analog loopback to integrate DSP based plugins into Reason via the hardware interface. But really, these don't really give you "moar plugins", in the end most systems (unless you buy a huge ProTools rack with LOADS of external DSP chips) have way less headroom for plugins than a modern computer. People use these systems because they give them lower latency when recording live with plugins because computer CPUs are not really made for realtime processing. They can put through a lot of data and do a lot of processing but theres always a certain amount of latency involved that through the design of things can't really brought down as far as it can with DSP chips.

[chrischrischris]

So if I understand you correctly there is away of using say uads compressor in reason instead of the softube 1176 and the dsp power required for that uad plugin will be offet by the appollo chips therefore benefiting reason but it wont directly improve reasons dsp performance as a standalone unit?

Also I have the option through mysoundcards mixer to listen to dry mic sends latency free but for me this is not acceptable.

thanks in advance

chris

[normen]

You can't just plug in a DSP processor to a computer and make it run the native plugins, that doesn't work with any system. The plugins are programmed and compiled for an Intel CPU and simply won't run on the DSP hardware. ProTools supports AAX plugins which contain the code for both the DSP system and the CPU and thus can switch them between the DSP box and the CPU.

And yes, with a DSP based system like the Apollo you can listen to the input latency-free, similar to your audio cards input mixer but you can put the (DSP-based) plugins of the DSP system on the monitor mix without adding any latency. You can also directly record the processed signal, just as if you'd have a real compressor on the analog side before your audio interface input.

For using Apollo in Reason it would work pretty much exactly as it would if you'd connect real hardware to your multichannel audio interfaces inputs and outputs, so you always get the full roundtrip latency for this solution. But of course you can measure and compensate that with the VMG-01 RE

[EnochLight]

Hi, Is there a dsp solution for reason... I use a pc , presonus firestudio via firewire, 8gb ram , amd fx 8 core.

Worst case scenario, you can always get a faster CPU.  Even the fastest AMD FX 8-core (currently the brand new 9590) compares similar to the mid-grade Intel i7-4770k that starting selling almost 2 years ago.
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu ... Eight-Core

[chrischrischris]

Yeah I had one of them intel chips two years ago but it blew up on me!
I find the fx is much more powerful than that one anyways.

What I think might help is a decent piece of software that shows where my system is lacking. The only results I can analyze show max 30 percent cpu and max 70 percent ram usage but as I read its down to how fast your chip can do the maths and if it cant possibly do the maths then it wont even try to calculate the sum hence no display of overused cpu power.

You say worst case senario buy a cpu what is the best case senario!
I dont want to but new kit that doesnt guarantee a fix for me. I just bought aother 8 gig of ram before christmas but that made no difference what so ever. Luckly I caught a young sales assistant on a busy day and got a refund.

Thanks in advance

Chris

[Ostermilk]

You can't just plug in a DSP processor to a computer and make it run the native plugins, that doesn't work with any system. The plugins are programmed and compiled for an Intel CPU and simply won't run on the DSP hardware. ProTools supports AAX plugins which contain the code for both the DSP system and the CPU and thus can switch them between the DSP box and the CPU.

And yes, with a DSP based system like the Apollo you can listen to the input latency-free, similar to your audio cards input mixer but you can put the (DSP-based) plugins of the DSP system on the monitor mix without adding any latency. You can also directly record the processed signal, just as if you'd have a real compressor on the analog side before your audio interface input.

For using Apollo in Reason it would work pretty much exactly as it would if you'd connect real hardware to your multichannel audio interfaces inputs and outputs, so you always get the full roundtrip latency for this solution. But of course you can measure and compensate that with the VMG-01 RE

Remember:

UAD Apollo Duo and Solo drivers don't exist for Windows even if you have a Thunderbolt equipped PC.

For the Apollo and Apollo 16 cards check out the support page before thinking about a UAD interface on a PC especially with regard to a qualified firewire add-on card.

http://www.uaudio.com/support/apollo-su ... quirements

The internal DSP cards are great on a PC but you are back to contolling them much like any other VST, that is either via Rewire or a convoluted audio loopback setup if you want to use the plug-ins alongside Reason.

Basically if you are planning to spend that kind of money on a PC based solution I'd suggest talking your requirements through with a specialist builder like ADK or booking a consultation with someone like Jim Roseberry at Purrrfect Audio.

The price of some seriously good advice may save you a pile of cash spent on a sub-optimal system that doesn't really fit your specific requirements.

[rcbuse]

Yeah I had one of them intel chips two years ago but it blew up on me! I find the fx is much more powerful than that one anyways. What I think might help is a decent piece of software that shows where my system is lacking. The only results I can analyze show max 30 percent cpu and max 70 percent ram usage but as I read its down to how fast your chip can do the maths and if it cant possibly do the maths then it wont even try to calculate the sum hence no display of overused cpu power. You say worst case senario buy a cpu what is the best case senario! I dont want to but new kit that doesnt guarantee a fix for me. I just bought aother 8 gig of ram before christmas but that made no difference what so ever. Luckly I caught a young sales assistant on a busy day and got a refund. Thanks in advance Chris

If reason is telling you that your DSP is maxed out, but your system tools are telling you the CPU is floating at 30%, you might want to make sure you have 'Use multi-core audio rendering' enabled in Reason's preferences.

[chrischrischris]

Yeah thats not the issue. This is a gradually worsening problem with the addition of tracks rather than a random goose in the system

Chris

[ScuzzyEye]

Yeah I had one of them intel chips two years ago but it blew up on me! I find the fx is much more powerful than that one anyways.

I thought my dual Six Core Opterons (12 cores total) were powerful. It seemed like they could do a lot of stuff in Reason. But their motherboard failed, and I didn't have the money to replace them with another, up to date, high-end workstation. So I just grabbed an Asus motherboard, and the fastest, standard Intel i7 available at the time. So I went from 12 true cores, to 4 with 4 Hyperthread cores.

The current i7 completely destroys the previous generation Opteron. I have 1/3 of the cores (Reason would use 11 on the Opterons, and only 3 on the i7), but I have at least twice the performance.

You should also note that the previous generation AMD chips to which my Opteron belonged were the last to have all cores being fully functional. All their current processors lack floating point units on half the cores. Because all of Reason's audio processing is done with floating point math, half the cores are not usable, and Reason will avoid them. Reason also reserves one full core for non-audio calculations. Windows still considers the AMD cores to be full cores, so the highest loading Reason can get on a current AMD 8 core is 3/8 = 37.5%.

I used to love AMD. I started with an AMD 386, had an Intel 486, but upgraded that chip with an AMD 5x86, then had a K6-2, and then an Athlon, and two different dual processor, Operton based machines. I'm sorry to leave them behind, but until they regain performance parity with Intel, there's no way I can use their chips.

[rcbuse]

Yeah I had one of them intel chips two years ago but it blew up on me! I find the fx is much more powerful than that one anyways.

I

thought

my dual Six Core Opterons (12 cores total) were powerful. It seemed like they could do a lot of stuff in Reason. But their motherboard failed, and I didn't have the money to replace them with another, up to date, high-end workstation. So I just grabbed an Asus motherboard, and the fastest, standard Intel i7 available at the time. So I went from 12 true cores, to 4 with 4 Hyperthread cores.

The current i7 completely destroys the previous generation Opteron. I have 1/3 of the cores (Reason would use 11 on the Opterons, and only 3 on the i7), but I have at least twice the performance.

You should also note that the previous generation AMD chips to which my Opteron belonged were the last to have all cores being fully functional. All their current processors lack floating point units on half the cores. Because all of Reason's audio processing is done with floating point math, half the cores are not usable, and Reason will avoid them. Reason also reserves one full core for non-audio calculations. Windows still considers the AMD cores to be full cores, so the highest loading Reason can get on a current AMD 8 core is 3/8 = 37.5%.

I used to love AMD. I started with an AMD 386, had an Intel 486, but upgraded that chip with an AMD 5x86, then had a K6-2, and then an Athlon, and two different dual processor, Operton based machines. I'm sorry to leave them behind, but until they regain performance parity with Intel, there's no way I can use their chips.

Fantastic write up.  Very informative.

[phasys]

I used to love AMD. I started with an AMD 386, had an Intel 486, but upgraded that chip with an AMD 5x86, then had a K6-2, and then an Athlon, and two different dual processor, Operton based machines. I'm sorry to leave them behind, but until they regain performance parity with Intel, there's no way I can use their chips.

386DX40 ftw!! Best CPU AMD ever made.

[m00ndancer]

Yeah I had one of them intel chips two years ago but it blew up on me! I find the fx is much more powerful than that one anyways.

I

thought

my dual Six Core Opterons (12 cores total) were powerful. It seemed like they could do a lot of stuff in Reason. But their motherboard failed, and I didn't have the money to replace them with another, up to date, high-end workstation. So I just grabbed an Asus motherboard, and the fastest, standard Intel i7 available at the time. So I went from 12 true cores, to 4 with 4 Hyperthread cores.

The current i7 completely destroys the previous generation Opteron. I have 1/3 of the cores (Reason would use 11 on the Opterons, and only 3 on the i7), but I have at least twice the performance.

There is also the latest i5, 4 cores and no Hypertreading, but that's not something Reason uses afaik. A lot cheaper so you can get a cpu + motherboard for the same price as the i7

[ScuzzyEye]

There is also the latest i5, 4 cores and no Hypertreading, but that's not something Reason uses afaik. A lot cheaper so you can get a cpu + motherboard for the same price as the i7

While Reason won't schedule audio rendering on the Hyperthread cores, the GUI and everything else going on in Windows can take advantage of the extra pipelines and allow more more DSP resources to be available. So, clock for clock, you will get a bit better performance from the i7 over the i5. Not much but there is a difference.